Category Archives: Obama

Broken Promises

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One of my favorite quotes from CPAC came from congressman Todd Tiahrt when he said, “making promises creates hope, keeping promises creates trust.” That is the perfect quote to describe Obama’s presidency thus far.

Transparency has been scarce, he’s talked one way about spending and acted another, and now he’s breaking his promise on earmark spending. Obama certainly isn’t creating much trust with the American people.

White House aides indicated that President Obama will sign a $410 billion spending bill, even though it contains thousands of special projects or earmarks. The AP reports the White House “on Sunday downplayed massive deficit spending and President Barack Obama’s pledge not to sign legislation laden with billions in earmarks amid Republican criticism that he was recanting on a key campaign promise.”

What’s the reason for this reversal? They simply want to get the past in the past and move on to the future, where they’ll actually be eliminating earmarks…or something like that.

White House Budget Director Peter Orsazg said Sunday that the new administration wants to “move on … get this bill done, get it into law and move forward.” Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, called the bill and its 8 percent spending increase over 2008 “last year’s business.”

Despite the fact that he has the power to stop earmarks now, it’s simply not the time. But it will be the time in the future, and that’s when he’ll be keeping his promise, you can bet on that.

So who’s requesting all this pork. Here are the top five porkers: Cochran, Wicker, Landrieu, Harkin, and Vitter. I don’t even care what party they’re in because that doesn’t matter. What matters is these guys account for 177 earmarks totaling $161,454,975 solo and $1,735,492,237 total when pork with other members is added in.

This isn’t a republican or democrat issue, it’s a fiscal responsibility issue. And because fiscal responsibility has suddenly jumped to the top of Obama’s priority list, he should have vetoed this bill.

Some of the spending in this bill is simply absurd (and I’ll get to that later), other spending is semi-legitimate, but in a time of economic recession should be shelved until we actually have the money to spend.

Projects such as renovations to three presidential libraries (all democrats) totaling $41,500,000, should be put on hold until we have the money to actually spend. Better yet, why don’t they find private donors to cover that cost.

Some of the best ridiculous spending includes…

-$1,049,000 for Mormon Crickets
-$225,000 for Everybody Wins! (how politically correct is that?)
-$200,000 for Tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, CA (I don’t live in California and I don’t have a tattoo)
-$75,000 for Totally Teen Zone, Albany, GA
-$300,000 for GoGirlGo! Boston, MA
-$100,000 for Police Athletic League of Buffalo, Inc
-$206,000 for Wool Research
-$3,800,000 for Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy, MI
-$237,500 for Paving, sidewalks and streetlights, Islip, NY (how much does it honestly cost to pave sidewalks?)
-$45,000 for Weed It Now on the Berkshire, MA

The list goes on and on, you can view the full list of earmarks here.

I just find it funny that Obama is getting ready to sign a bill with that many earmarks when his website says…

As a Senator, President Obama introduced and passed bipartisan legislation that would require more disclosure and transparency for special-interest earmarks. Obama and Biden believe that spending that cannot withstand public scrutiny cannot be justified. Obama and Biden will slash earmarks to no greater than 1994 levels and ensure all spending decisions are open to the public.

Yeah, it looks like that bipartisan legislation has really worked out well.

Obama has promised the world to the American people, and that has certainly built hope in the country. However, if he wants to be a successful president he has to come through on those promises and build actual trust.

–jb

There are More Important Things

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As you all know I had the pleasure of being in attendance at Rush Limbaugh’s keynote address at CPAC on Saturday night. It was the highlight of the weekend and the energy in the room was unmatched to almost anything I’ve experienced before.

Rush was himself; intelligent, funny, and controversial. He’s not a politician, he’s not someone the democrats have to worry about running against, yet the White House feels a need, during these tough economic times, to respond to Rush’s comments.

Uhhh…what?

Robert Gibbs actually wasted time in his latest press briefing responding to what Gibbs believes is Rush’s assertion that he wants Obama to fail. I’ll remind you, Rush never said that. Limbaugh wants Obama to succeed to his standards. Basically what that means is if Obama is going to implement big government spending, Rush wants it to fail. Oh and let’s not forget the millions of liberals who wanted Bush’s presidency to fail. And I find it completely ironic that the left is whining about this considering they actually pronounced the Iraq war failed, before the surge was even fully implemented.

Gibbs has apparently forgotten this historical fact.

“I can only imagine what might have been said a few years ago if somebody might have said that on the other side relating to what was going on in this country or our
endeavors overseas,” Gibbs said.

Earth to Robert Gibbs…someone did. Harry Reid pronounced the Iraq war failed on June 13, 2007.

He added that the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, at which Limbaugh spoke over the weekend, seemed to embrace Limbaugh’s wish for Obama’s failure, saying that Limbaugh’s “notion of presidential failures seemed to be quite popular in the room in which he spoke.”

This directly includes me, so I shall respond to Gibbs’ stupidity. For starters the mainstream media has withheld a lot from Rush’s speech. For one no one has shown the clips from the first third of the speech where Rush defines conservatism, and does so perfectly. But they’ve also withheld the part where Rush explains, via an example, his wanting Obama to fail.

In his speech Rush compared his statement to wanting the Cardinals to lose the Super Bowl. Rush said he was a Steelers fan and he, of course, enjoyed watching them win and the Cardinals lose. As I’ve said before, it’s not that he wants America to fail, it’s not even that he wants Obama as a person to fail, he wants Obama’s philosophy to fail, as it has in the past.

Gibbs goes on…

He added: “I don’t think it’s a crazy question to ask about the commenting on whether or not somebody that seems to be maybe, for lack of a better word, a national spokesperson for conservative views and many in the Republican Party, what do I think about or what does this White House think about him on at least two separate occasions in front of large and applauding audiences seeking the failure of the president’s economic agenda?”

Good lord, how long did Gibbs go on about this? If this was the Bush White House the response to this question would have been, “we have no comment.” There’s an economic crisis going on, on top of a host of other issues, and the White House Press Secretary is wasting his time responding to a radio talk show host.

Give me a break.

–jb

Obama’s Two Way Cut and Run

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I completely forgot that I haven’t commented on any news for several days now, and there have been two big stories that have emerged that require at least a quick comment from me, although I must forewarn, it’s really not all that quick.

The first is Obama’s newly announced Iraq plan, which seems to be more party politics influenced than actually what’s good for the troops.

Amid complaints from his own party that he’s moving too slowly to end the war in Iraq, President Barack Obama will announce Friday that U.S. combat troops will be withdrawn by Aug. 31, 2010, but that as many as 50,000 Marines and soldiers would remain until the end of 2011.

Well that’s nice. It wasn’t, “amid complaints from military commanders,” it’s “amid complaints from his own party.” Good to see that Obama is consulting and listening to the right people in this situation.

You also might notice two interesting points in his new Iraq plan. One, it’s sightly longer than he promised on the campaign, and two, it’s not really a withdraw. I guess when you become president you’re also granted the right to amend the dictionary. He’s changed “tax credits” into “tax cuts” and now he’s changed the idea of a “draw down” into a “withdraw.” It must be nice.

The 18-month timetable for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq is two months longer than he promised during his campaign. Aides who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly said that military commanders wanted the extra time. “The president found that compelling,” said one senior administration official.

So the extra time (an added 3 months from his 16 month campaign promise) is the doing of military commanders. Wait a minute, didn’t he consult military commanders before making his announcement of a 16 month timetable. That was the idea, the plan was “endorsed” by military commanders on the ground. Conditions haven’t gotten worse in the last couple months, why all of a sudden are these commanders requesting more time?

The other big news is the budget, which is big news for it’s sheer size. It tops out at a mind shattering $3.55 trillion, so much for fiscal responsibility. Speaking of that term, Obama has redefined that as well. Obama, and the liberals believe, that fiscal responsibility means a balanced budget, regardless of how large it is.

Uhhh…no, fiscal responsibility means as small a budget as possible while still funding the government’s basic responsibilities. But anyway…

The new bill increases taxes on just about everyone over the next 10 years. Obama has spun the tax increases as only on the 5% wealthiest people in the country, but that’s simply false. As Newt Gingrich said today, so long as those people don’t use electricity, gasoline, or heating oil in their homes, Obama is correct.

The bill brings forth a cap and trade program to reign in carbon dioxide, something that will certainly lead to higher costs at the pump and at people’s homes. It also increases various business taxes by $353 billion over the next 10 years, something that certainly won’t help with job creation. And it increases taxes on the wealthy by $636 billion over 10 years, including a money killing capital gains tax hike.

Remember what happened when Hoover raised taxes in the late 20′s and early 30′s? It turned a depression into the great depression. You might also remember that Hoover created the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which increased tariffs on thousands of imports, the cost of which were passed down to consumers. Not only did that act decrease the number of imports and exports it also increased the price of the products that successfully arrived here.

That same type of crippling tax increase is being supported by Obama as a cap and trade system. Because businesses will have to pay for emitting CO2 they’ll have to either budget money to pay for the CO2 (thus having to increase their revenue by increasing prices), or they’ll have to spend money and renovate all of their factories and buildings to emit less CO2, either way the consumer will be paying higher prices.

The final irony of this whole spending bill is that Obama promised to halve the deficit by the end of his first term, he’s certainly not getting off on the right foot. He also said he was going to reign in earmarks, well the Democrats spending bill included over 8,000 earmarks.

As Todd Tiahrt said today at CPAC, “making promises creates hope, keeping promises creates trust.”

–jb

The Best State of the Union, from the Best President Ever

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Okay, so the title of this post is just a tab bit of hyperbole. But you know that some people are thinking that tonight. Oh, wait, I’m sorry it’s not a State of the Union, it’s a “political vision” speech, explain to me the difference?

Check back from live updates as Obama gives his speech.

Clap Counter: 66
Standing Ovation Counter: 43
Laugh: 3

10:08PM – The State of the Union, oh I’m sorry, the “political vision” speech is over. It was basically what I expected. It was more positive on the economy, and it needed to be because he’s been very negative on the economy thus far. He attempted to inject confidence in the economy, but actions speak louder than words. There were some specifics, mainly on green energy, but for the most part the speech was vague and rhetoric filled…a typical Obama speech. If you want a more detailed analysis of the speech I recommended reading what I wrote during the speech.

The speech ran just as long as a normal State of the Union speech, but I felt like it was longer. Maybe it was just because I didn’t agree with much of it, or maybe there was more clapping. By the way, my clap counter is probably a few claps off, I was busy writing when they snuck some in.

Let me give you my quick review of the speech, I will attempt to approach it from three different angles.

CNN: One of the most inspirational speeches since Obama’s last speech.
MSNBC: The greatest speech ever!
Fox News: A decent speech that was nothing special, but laid out his vision for the coming year.

10:04PM – Obama spotlights two examples of people succeeding or doing good things without government intervention. Ironic isn’t it.

10:03PM – From John Culberson via Twitter – “We are at war – seems to me honoring our troops should come on page one rather than the end of the speech.” He’s got a point.

10:00PM – Obama hails his decision to close Gitmo, and says that closing it makes us stronger and safer and that the United States “does not torture.” I guess we’ll have to wait until his committee defines “torture” before we can really say that. By the way, this speech is flirting with being longer than all of Abe Lincoln’s speeches combined. Of course I’m kidding about that.

9:57PM – Obama says he’s going to find a way to responsibly end this war. No one has ever really elaborated as to what that is. And by the way, Big Nance Pelosi is going to pull a hamstring if she keeps jumping up like she is.

9:54PM – Again Obama says that he’s going to end tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas. That’s why they ship jobs overseas, because taxes are lower. Obama says that if you make under $250,000 a year you will not see your taxes raised a “dime, not a dime.” That’s already a lie, he’s already raised the cigarette tax by signing SCHIP. Fun story, that’s a tax.

9:52PM – Obama says that we passed a stimulus “free of earmarks.” Technically yes, but who cares what it’s called, wasteful spending is wasteful spending. Obama says they’ve already found $2 trillion is unnecessary spending. In the name of transparency why doesn’t he release what those savings are?

9:51PM – Obama says that American education begins with the parents. Ya know what that means…government provided parents! There’s a new government agency, “The Agency of Government Provided Parents.”

9:48PM – Obama says everyone “needs” more than a high school education. Does that mean he’s going to mandate college?

9:45PM – Obama says health care reform “cannot wait, and will not wait another year.” Again, how does this exactly fit into his plan to cut the budget deficit? All of his solutions to these programs include more government intervention and government spending.

9:43PM – Obama says “we can afford to put health care reform on hold.” Obama begins to mention Congress’ passage of SCHIP and Nancy Pelosi jumped up like a piranha was biting at her butt.

9:38PM: Obama breaks down some issues. Energy – The country that harnesses “green” energy will lead the world (or something like that). “It’s time for America to lead again,” in relation to “green” energy. Obama says the “recovery” plan will inject the largest investment in energy research and a bunch of other crap. He also says we’re going to lay down a crap ton of power lines and make homes and building more energy efficient. Obama says he wants a cap and trade system on carbon pollution. More socialist tinges.

Obama says he’s going to invest $15 billion in more green energy. How does that fit into halving the budget deficit?

Obama says that he “will not project [the auto industry] from their own bad business.” That’s exactly what we’ve done, they’ve failed to make cars people want, and they’ve took huge hits for it.

9:37PM – Obama says that government “catalyzes private enterprise.” There’s some hidden socialist propaganda for ya.

9:36PM – Obama sees the budget as a “vision for America, a blueprint for our future.” I guess we can consider that foreshadowing for the largest fiscal year budget ever. Obama says he rejects the view that problems will take care of themselves, and he says that history tells a different story. He says that during every turmoil the government has responded. Yeah he’s right, they did, that doesn’t mean it has worked.

9:33PM – Obama says that it’s the government’s job to solve the problem. But wait, I thought Obama was against big government. “It’s not about helping banks it’s about helping people.” – Barack Obama (great populist rhetoric) Obama also says that when credit is flowing again businesses will be able to hire workers again, well not if they continue to face a high business tax and an even higher capital gains tax. And small businesses won’t be hiring people if the payroll tax is increased. Obama also says it’s time to put into place new tough “rules of the road” when it comes to regulations. Again, I thought he was against big government?

9:29PM – My question about Obama’s housing plan. How do you tell the difference between someone who “bought more home than they could afford” and someone who was simply cheated by the system?

9:27PM – Obama says that the ability to get a loan and the flow of credit is the lifeblood of the economy. He also says that these banks are “fearful of lending.” He’s correct, but his plan only makes them more fearful but allowing judges to intervene in the contract between a bank and a homeowner and change the agreement.

9:26PM – “Nobody messes with Joe.” – Barack Obama

9:24PM – Obama mentions that 95% of the country will recieve a tax cut. Uhh…nope. Again, it’s a tax credit, they’re temporary. And it adds a massive $8 a week.

9:22PM – Obama says he doesn’t believe in bigger government and says he’s mindful of the massive debt! Despite those two things he still signed a $786 billion spending plan. With that line he got a standing ovation from the Dems and of course the three musketeers stood up. This speech, thus far, has simply been Obama’s stump speech when he was attempting to sell the stimulus to the country.

9:20PM – Obama says that we’ve known for years that we need more oil (or something like that), but we continue to import more oil than ever before. Yet for the longest time on the campaign trail he failed to back offshore drilling and his Interior Department is going to review it for 180 days. He also says that people bought homes they couldn’t afford, yet he’s going to let judges bailout those homeowners.

9:19PM – Obama gets positive saying “we will rebuild” and we will emerge “stronger than before.” Of course everyone stands up…add one to the clap counter!

9:16PM – Pelosi introduces Obama, and this time it actually looks like she means she’s “honored and privileged” to do it.

9:15PM – Fox News just reported that the Obama camp is saying his approval ratings are no longer related to the inauguration or even the campaign but are only a reflection of his policies over the last month. What a fantasy idea!

9:10PM – Barack Obama just entered the chambers. So that’s one clap and one standing ovation on the clap counter. The event is running about 12 minutes late. The Obama is dubbing this a “political vision speech” and not a State of the Union speech. Uhh, didn’t we just get cleansed of 2 years of political vision speeches on the campaign trail?

–jb

The Current #126

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The Current #126
Monday February 23, 2009

Logan is out with strep throat so Jacob is flying solo on this episode.

Obama Talking out of Both Sides of his Mouth
President Barack Obama has announced that he will attempt to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term. He also blamed the bloated budget on Bush, never mind the fact that a quarter of the deficit is the stimulus bill he just signed. Jacob says that Bush is to blame, but Obama’s hands certainly aren’t clean.

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Fairness is Making a Comeback
The fairness doctrine continues to get talk this week, actually it’s really just Bill Press calling for it’s revival. In any event Press was on Fox News making some ridiculous claims. Jacob responds and discusses why liberal talk radio has always failed and why it will continue to do so.

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Terrorist Air Hockey
General David Petraeus, who happens to be a fairly smart guy, said this week that Iran is helping Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Jacob isn’t surprised, after all this plays right into his “terrorist air hockey” theory.

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The Budget Magicians: Making Deficits Disappear…or Something Like That

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Obama said yesterday that he plans to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term. Which I guess is kind of sour good news. After all the deficit sits at $1.3 trillion, even if he did cut it in half he’d still have a $650 billion deficit, which is much greater than most of the deficits under Bush.

Speaking of Bush, Obama made it very clear yesterday that the budget woes are not of his doing, but rather the doing of his predecessor.

At one point, Obama criticized “the casual dishonesty of hiding irresponsible spending with clever accounting tricks, the costly overruns, the fraud and abuse, the endless excuses. This is exactly what the American people rejected when they went to the polls. They sent us here to usher in a new era of responsibility in Washington, to start living within our means again and being straight with them about where their tax dollars are going.”

The people didn’t go to the polls to decrease the deficit, if that were the case they wouldn’t have voted for Obama, the plans he laid out on the campaign trail would have increased the deficit.

I make no excuses for Bush’s handling of the budget, however, Obama’s hands aren’t clean on this issue. There were two massive drags on the budget in Bush’s last year. The first was the summer stimulus and the second was the TARP bailout. It just so happens that Obama voted for both of them.

And oh by the way, roughly a quarter of that $1.3 trillion deficit is Obama’s recently signed stimulus. He’s talking out of both sides of his mouth. One week he signs one of the largest new spending bills the next week he preaches about fiscal responsibility. Stop talking about fiscal responsibility and start practicing it.

Even after Obama promised to cut the budget deficit two stories broke today that display just how tough that promise will be to keep.

First, Hillary Clinton is expected to announce close a billion dollars in aide to help rebuild the Gaza Strip.

The United States plans to offer more than $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after Israel’s invasion and to strengthen the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, U.S. officials said on Monday.

The money, which needs U.S. congressional approval, will be distributed through U.N. and other bodies and not via the militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, said one official.

The money is being distributed through the U.N., so I’m sure it won’t be misspent. Lord knows the U.N. has never misspent money.

Bush also allocated money through the U.N. for the Gaza Strip as well, but it was a mere $85 million, that’s quite the dwarf when compared to $900 million. With our current economic and fiscal condition, can anyone really justify spending nearly a billion dollars to rebuild a territory that we didn’t destroy?

The second story is more fiscal irresponsibility from the democrats.

House Democrats unveiled a $410 billion spending bill on Monday to keep the government running through the end of the fiscal year, setting up the second political struggle over federal funds in less than a month with Republicans.

The measure includes thousands of earmarks, the pet projects favored by lawmakers but often criticized by the public in opinion polls. There was no official total of the bill’s earmarks, which accounted for at least $3.8 billion.

The spending is an 8% increase over last year, which is clearly more than the rate of inflation (at least for now). Republicans have called for a spending freeze to display fiscal responsibility, however I wouldn’t hold my breath on the democrats agreeing.

Literally the day after Obama announces his plan to cut the budget deficit in half, the democrats purpose $410,900,000,000 in spending. Obama, Pelosi and Reid have to be some sort of budget magicians to pull this one off.

–jb

The Current #125

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The Current #125
Saturday February 14, 2009

The Crap Sandwich No One has Seen
The stimulus plan passed both the House and Senate on Friday, despite the fact that no one had read it. How do we know? It was available at 11pm on Thursday and was voted on at 2:30pm on Friday, clearly not enough time to read 1,075 pages. The real kicker with the bill is the radical health care provisions in it. What other pork is there? We don’t really know…because no ones read it.

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Obama’s Bad Week
It was a rocky week for Obama. First his Commerce Secretary pulls out, then Tim Geithner announces his plan to make a plan for the banks, and then he gets caught up misquoting the president of Caterpillar.

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What were you doing when you were 12?
Most people were going to school, hanging out with friends, and drinking Capri Suns when they were 12. Not British youth Alfie, he was becoming a father with his 14 year old “girl friend.” Despite their young age both kids believe they can be good parents, that is until they hit college.

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House Passes the Stimulus that No One Read UPDATE: Tom Price Looks at the Bill

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John Boehner has it right. Not a single member of that body read the entire package, yet 246 members voted yes. How can you vote for something that you haven’t even read? Especially when it contains a trillion dollars in spending.

Yet again the Republicans gave not a single vote in favor of the bill, and seven Democrats sided with the Republicans.

Here’s what I love. Robert Gibbs, Obama’s Press Secretary, made this comment today.

Robert Gibbs reacted by citing another number: “3.5 million jobs that we look forward to saving or creating.”

How the hell does anyone know!? No one has read the bill. God only knows what’s in it.

The bill now advances to the Senate where a vote might come tonight. I’ll be interested to see if it passes the 60 vote threshold, Reid will need the support of the “three musketeers” if he wants this to be a done deal by tomorrow morning.

UPDATE:

–jb

Sheltering the Stimulus

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Something smells very funky about this stimulus plan.

I’ve always thought it was a bad idea, but the new “compromised” bill from the House and Senate has a stench to it that is worrying me very much. It has nothing to do with what’s actually in the bill, very few people are privileged enough to have even read it, it has to do with how Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are handling the situation.

First, they promise the bill will be online for the public to read at least 48 hours before a vote takes place. The bill wasn’t placed online until last night around 11pm and a vote is expected today. Obviously that’s not 48 hours.

The reason the Democrats didn’t get the bill up in time is because they were converting it to unsearchable PDF files. Usually a bill is placed online and you can search through the text by typing in keywords. However, with this stimulus bill three out of the four PDF files are images, meaning there’s no search functionality.

Why would the most open and transparent Congress and presidency not want the people to search their bill? Probably because there’s some controversial items. If the bill is online for…lets say 20 hours before a vote, someone could easily use the search functionality and find all the ridiculous stuff the Dems crammed in there. However, if it’s online for 20 hours with no search functionality you basically have to read the bill. And at 1,071 pages you’d have to read 54 pages an hour for 20 hours straight. It is impossible to read the stimulus in its entirety before the House votes on it.

Oh but it gets better.

Republicans have been calling for the vote to take place at a later time, maybe over the weekend or on Monday. The Democrats have scoffed at that idea without giving a reason as to why a vote shouldn’t be delayed.

Well they’ve found a reason now.

John Culberson of Texas says that a vote on the stimulus has to take place today because Speaker of the House Pelosi is leaving on an 8-day trip to Europe tomorrow.

Give me a second to grab a tissue to wipe my tears.

I thought this bill is suppose to save the economy, clearly Pelosi could cancel a trip to Europe for that!

What exactly is Speaker Pelosi doing in Europe that she has to go. According to Drudge…

Pelosi is hoping to lead a delegation to Europe; there’s a meeting with the Pope and an award from an Italian legislative group.

So basically increasing her ego. Certainly nothing urgent, certainly nothing she couldn’t cancel.

I’ve yet to read the bill or see any detailed summary of it, but this certainly smells fishy. Let me lay it out for you one more time.

-The bill is 1,071 pages long making it impossible to read in less than 24 hours and large enough to hide some radical stuff
-The Democrats promised the bill would be online 48 hours before a vote, if they vote today (depending on the time) it will only have been online for around 20 hours.
-The bill, unlike every other bill that goes through Congress, is not searchable online
-Negotiations on the bill took place exclusively between Democrats and Obama staffers, Republicans weren’t invited
-The bill was distributed to K Street lobbyists before congressional offices
-According to Democrats the bill has to be voted on today because Pelosi is leaving for Europe
-Democrats and Republicans are teed off that they don’t have time to read the full text

This is a very concerning and frightening situation. To think that Congress would authorize a trillion dollars in spending without the entire delegation reading the bill is mind numbing. This irresponsibility must come to an end.

And ya know who should lead that charge. The guy who’s been talking all the bipartisan rhetoric over the last month…Barack Obama. Where is the outcry from the White House over these outrageous actions?

–jb

So Much for a Smooth Transition UPDATE: More Bad News for Obama

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Before he was actually inaugurated, the press was hailing Obama for doing a superb job on his transition into office. He had selected the right cabinet members, he hadn’t sparred with Bush over anything, and it looked as if he’d hit the ground running on January 20.

I think it’s time for all the news media to offer up a retraction to those stories.

Judd Gregg pulled his name for nomination to Obama’s cabinet today, marking the third cabinet member to withdrawal from a position. The first two were for corruption issues, the third is because Obama wants to radicalize the census. Funny how the two corruption issues fall on Democrat’s shoulders, while the lone Republican quits because Obama’s philosophy doesn’t jibe with his.

After we add in Timothy Geithner to the mix we see a bleak transition picture. Maybe, just maybe, Bush was the half of the transition making it successful. Just sayin’.

For all those people during the campaign that said William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright were irrelevant…bite your tongue. I never held Obama responsible for what those two said, but rather for his terrible judgment in connecting with those two in the first place. Now it’s showing. Obama doesn’t have good judgment, and these three would-be cabinet members prove that.

Let’s not forget all the bipartisan bull he’s spewed, while turning the other way when it came down to businesses. As I wrote before, Republicans weren’t even invited to the Senate-House stimulus compromise. They weren’t even told it was going on!

We can also scratch the “tough on lobbyists” rhetoric off the list as well. Besides already making an exception for a former lobbyist, he’s also let K Street lobbyists get a peak at the stimulus bill before congressional offices.

We’re receiving E-mails from Capitol Hill staffers expressing frustration that they can’t get a copy of the stimulus bill agreed to last night at a price of $789 billion. What’s more, staffers are complaining about who does have a copy: K Street lobbyists. E-mails one key Democratic staffer: “K Street has the bill, or chunks of it, already, and the congressional offices don’t.

I’m not saying that Obama is directly responsible for the lobbyists seeing it before congressional staffers, but weren’t Pelosi and Reid suppose to lend a helping hand on the quest for hope ‘n change?

All I ask is for the media to hold Obama accountable. I, and other bloggers, will continue to put pressure on the media to actually ask tough questions and not let things slide by. And I will say that some have done a good job thus far. But if this were Bush making all these mistakes his first month in office, he’d already be deemed the dumbest man alive and the worst president ever.

UPDATE: When I was writing the part above about how there are some reporters that have done a good job thus far, I almost mentioned Jake Tapper from ABC News, because he’s someone who has stood out in my mind as someone who has leveled tough questions at Obama.

Well, Tapper has come up big again. It was reported on Drudge yesterday that Obama said the CEO of Caterpillar would begin to rehire employees if the stimulus were passed. Unfortunately for Obama the CEO of Caterpillar said just the opposite when Obama left today’s news conference.

Asked if the stimulus package would be able to stop the 22,000 layoffs or not, Owens said, “I think realistically no. The truth is we’re going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again”

“It is going to take some time before that stimulus bill” means re-hiring, he said.

Watch the clip at the link, Obama says he’s confident the rehiring bug will pass to other businesses if the stimulus passes, yet he can’t even get one business to say they’ll rehire.

–jb